Disco Elysium: The Final Cut

Disco Elysium: The Final Cut brought the console version of ZA/UM's critically acclaimed RPG to Xbox One, enriched with full voice acting for every character and additional political content. The player wakes up as an amnesiac detective in the decaying port city of Revachol and must investigate a murder while gradually piecing together their own past, identity, and political beliefs. Instead of traditional combat, the game relies almost entirely on dialogue and a skill system, where twenty-four inner voices of the character, ranging from intellect to empathy to physical prowess, comment on situations and influence the player's available choices.

The writing is exceptionally rich and literary, full of dark humor, existential musings, and political satire examining ideologies from communism to ultranationalism without offering easy answers. On Xbox One, gamepad controls work surprisingly naturally thanks to a clear quick-selection system, and the voice acting adds a new layer of character to the cast. The atmosphere is completed by melancholic music and a visual style reminiscent of an oil painting. The game was showered with awards for its writing and originality at launch, and the Final Cut only confirmed that this is one of the most ambitious and literary RPGs of recent years, one that redefined what a dialogue-driven RPG can be.

The world of Revachol carries traces of a fictional but deeply developed history full of failed revolutions and colonial injustices, which the player gradually uncovers through conversations with residents, newspaper clippings, and the detective's own memories. The skill system doesn't function as mere passive bonuses but as active inner voices that can tempt the detective into impulsive acts, self-destruction, or unexpected flashes of intuition, portraying the protagonist's fractured psyche in an unusually literal way. The added Final Cut political quests further deepen the ideological spectrum the player can choose for their character, from communism to fascism, without the game ever painting any direction as unambiguously right.

Why play it: For players who want an RPG with a deeply developed world and skills that function as active inner voices, the Final Cut also offers expanded political quests and a spectrum of ideologies from communism to fascism.